The present invention relates to a fuel consumption display system for vehicles that displays different kinds of fuel consumption, and to an associated fuel consumption display method.
A car navigation system with a function for displaying vehicular information such as fuel consumption information is known (xe2x80x9cIntroduction to new model cars P11-3, P11 series (supplemented version III) F009871, Nissan Motor Co.).
This system has a fuel consumption display screen, which displays information of different kinds of fuel consumption. Specifically, a temporary (i.e. short-term) fuel consumption of a traveling vehicle at the current time is displayed by a bar graph, and a (longer-term) average fuel consumption from a startup of the engine for the travel to the current time is displayed in numeric value. The average fuel consumption is provided to the driver of the vehicle as a reference for use in determining whether or not the temporary fuel consumption is acceptable.
The temporary fuel consumption varies in response to variations in the running condition of the vehicle.
The vehicle operator visually discriminates a varying state of the temporary fuel consumption from the bar graph, reads a numeric display of the average fuel consumption, and makes a decision by comparison on the relative magnitude therebetween as, to reason that the current fuel consumption is acceptable.
While the reasoning itself is not difficult, it does require the driver to use power of thinking for making the decision by a quantitative comparison between different kinds of fuel consumption.
Accordingly, and in consideration of the foregoing, it is an object of the invention to provide a fuel consumption display system and a fuel consumption display method that can effectively support in low-cost a vehicle operator making a quantitative comparison between different kinds of fuel consumption.
To achieve this object, one aspect of the invention is a fuel consumption display system for vehicles, the system comprising an operator which calculates different kinds of fuel consumption in a common quantitative unit, and a display which visually and simultaneously displays by a common scale factor the different kinds of fuel consumption calculated by the operator.
According to this aspect of the invention, different kinds of fuel consumption are calculated in a common quantitative unit, and are visually and simultaneously displayed by using a scale factor common therebetween.
Accordingly, the vehicle operator is allowed to arrive at a decision result equivalent to that achieved by careful thought, by merely making a visual comparison between the displayed different kinds of fuel consumption, without the need to be concerned with making a quantitative comparison between the different kinds of fuel consumption.
The vehicle operator can thus be effectively aided in making a quantitative comparison of different kinds of fuel consumption. In addition, a reduction in cost can be accrued by a possible sharing of display elements.
The invention can also achieve the object as a fuel consumption display method for vehicles comprising calculating different kinds of fuel consumption in a common quantitative unit, and visually and simultaneously displaying by a common scale factor the different kinds of fuel consumption calculated.